Plating out and culture inoculation is a procedure used extensively in life science laboratories. For example, the technique finds wide application in clinical biology as a means of disease identification and treatment, in molecular biology as part of the Sanger DNA sequencing protocol and in pharmaceutical research to screen antibiotics. Briefly, the method comprises growing microbiological material in, for example, a Petri-dish and the selecting from the resultant growth (or lawn) those colonies or plaques (e.g. of yeasts, fungi, bacteria or virus infected plaques) which are required for further study or amplification. The technique is currently effected manually by experienced personnel who, identify the colonies or plaques of interest, then `pick-out` these colonies or plaques with individual sampling probes (usually sterile pointed sticks). The colonies or plaques are then transferred individually to discrete culture tubes or containers in which they are incubated prior to further processing. Many laboratories require hundreds, and possibly thousands, of such operations to be effected daily in a process which is manpower intensive, tedious, repetitive and error prone. Additionally, many cultures of interest may be harmful and consequently there is a health risk with the transfer of such cultures. Furthermore, human operators carry a wide variety of organisms and it is, therefore, difficult to maintain sterile operating conditions when the procedure is being carried out manually.